Legendary VI: Legendary Armor (PFRPG) PDF

We have all heard tales of the heroic young adventurer who dons magical armor from times long forgotten. That adventurer grows in power and acclaim alongside the magical armor until both reach their true potention.

Within this product you will find 15 legendary armors that will grow in power alongside your Pathfinder Roleplaying Game character.

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Awesome armor for aspiring adventurers!

Throughout the Legendary series Purple Duck Games have brought to the table a variety of magical arms and armament which develop and grow alongside a player character; while three of the prior entries covered a veritable arsenal of weaponry and one for shields (and one a collection of wondrous items made more so), at long last we're presented with an armory of legendary leathers and mails to bear into the field and protect aspiring heroes. Let's take a look at how Marc Radle has done in the smithy, yes?

If you're unfamiliar with the series, the premise is similar to the Legacy Items of before--magical gear which grow in power and special abilities provided you meet certain prerequisites with a given character. These prerequisites can range from satisfying a particular class, ranks in certain skills, access to given feats and so on. Unlike Legacy Items, the Legendary series has taken an approach which generally eschews leveling penalties on a character in exchange for their new-found benefits.

Legendary Armor opens up with a brief introduction and an explanation of the advancement and bonus feat mechanics presented within. After that, it's right off to the running with the armory, kicking off with the Assassin's Chain--which certainly lives up to its namesake. With each entry there's first a back-story which explains an origin of these pieces of powerful equipment (though as one can imagine, such could and ought be tweaked and tailored to fit into a given game smoothly.)

From incredible stealth and shadowy powers to several potent and deadly spell-like abilities, the Assassin's Chain would work well with an appropriately themed character. There's a bit of a boost to sneak attack near the beginning of the progression, some of the expected augments--but what is probably the most interesting part is the capstone ability, Clandestine Perfection, which serves as a veritably epic version of invisibility such to circumvent many of the traditional means of seeing a character obscured by such. Mind you, it's at 20th level--but still, pretty flavorful and cool for this sort of concept.

Battlecaster Armor is next, and both it and the Assassin's Chain I think could've used more evocative names--but as with the first entry, you get a pretty immediate idea as to what you're in store for. This suit has augments for a magus or similar such class of character and beyond boosts to casting while armored and bonus feats, augments meta-magic usage and empowers arcane pool abilities. No signature capstone ability, but very solid and well-rounded utility overall; if you are into this sort of character, you'd probably love to secure a suit like this.

Beggar's Feast follows--now there's a keener name; it also sports a fairly meaty back-story to sink your teeth into! Here we have curious padded armor which provides stealthiness and evasion alongside luck bonuses. However, the wearer can also create food and water, can gain benefit a la a ring of sustenance and can even eventually fashion heroes' feasts. Pretty unexpected, but I like it--there's some really good flavor to this one.

Blood Drinker is our first evil offering if you turn a blind eye to the Assassin's Chain, a menacing suit of spiked plate that's all about various ways of introducing more bleeding into your combat repertoire. Somewhat curiously, you can actually end up firing the spikes off of the armor shooting them all over the place. Fitting for its mien, the armor also bears Dread for its wearer and provides several fearful effects for foes.

Champion's Plate serves to shift the scales to the other end of the spectrum, a masterful and gleaming suit of full plate perfect for any character fond of mounted combat and heavy armor. Some of the bonus feats and abilities may end up overlapping in certain class situations, but the theme of the armor's spread stick strongly to fearlessly charging with a couched lance astride a mighty steed. I liked this one a lot, but I am a big fan of knights as characters.

Healer's Hand is the final solution for a character who is absolutely devoted to healing in all combat all the time. From tossing out cure spells as swift actions (limited uses per day), having breath of life on backup, augmenting additional healing on top of any spells named for such and ultimately busting out its own built-in mass heal--this breastplate starts and stops at keeping battlefield companions up and fighting the good fight.

Kama-Xia shifts us to a more exotic tempo with a very cool set of mountain pattern armor themed around being able to stand one's ground and potentially upset an entire battlefield. This suit is quite cool (though mountain stride on mountain pattern armor was a little on the nose!) Determination is quite potent--once per day when the wearer would hit 0 or fewer hit points, a breath of life is triggered automatically; yet this is just one of a very wide variety of neat abilities, from granting allies tactical bonuses to halting enemy movement. This one it one of my favorites overall.

Kelgror's Ghost is splint mail imbued with a great spirit of smithing while its bevy of abilities primarily orient around ghosts and spirits in general. From providing its wearer ghost weapon (and functioning against ghostly attacks as armor!) to spiritual weapons and facilitating speaking with the dead, there's fairly cool style here. Eventually, one gains ghost sight and ghost walk--seeing the incorporeal and invisible and moving incorporeally respectively; I had a little bit of an issue with these aspects, but otherwise Kelgror's groovy armor might finally give someone incentive to wear splint mail over plate.

Landshark's Hide--now we're talking! This crazy suit of hide armor is fashioned from a bulette, everyone's favorite landshark terror! Easily one of the most bizarre magic raiments of the lot and a whole lot of fun. You get Bulette's Leap which is a special 'pounce' attack (though not like a cat's) to hurtle yourself around enemies and from there, have augments to both bull-rush and overrun maneuvers and even tremorsense and a savage bite attack. Frankly, this is just a really fun suit of armor and encourages you to jump and shove and dive all over the place, turning any battle into a brawl.

Mage Hunter's Armor is half-plate with all the tools you'd expect to supplement smashing magic enemies. Spell resistance coupled with activated spell immunity and dispel magic and then backed with bonus feats by way of disruptive, spell breaker and so on. This is another entry that pretty much declares what you're out for and then delivers a backpack full of tools to make it happen, much like the Healer's Hand.

Minstrel's Boon is leather armor unsurprisingly tailored for bards, with augments for performances and checks of knowledge and lore. More or less everything packed in serves to help better a bard at the things they do best with the added boon of helping to shield them against efforts to silence them--and what performer would not pay dearly for such a cuirass against critics?

Oak Heart's Armor is wooden armor and empowers its wearer to turn into a tree! Its utility spread covers much for tending to potential forest calamities, with quench and fire resistance coupled with animating other trees and striding among them. The signature ability here is the Spirit of Oak Heart, allowing the wearer to bring in a ghostly treant to help them explain to their enemies why their clear-cutting of trees is not the healthiest of decisions they might have made. I certainly liked the visual of calling in celestial treant backup.

Seducer's Silk is silken ceremonial armor with a significant power of suggestion--both literally by way of the same spell and by an aura of personality to woo those nearby. Mass suggestion and domination come further along, while 'Desire to Please' might have others compelled to hand over valuables to the wearer. Having a built-in mind blank at higher levels is curious--but seduction aside, the armor also boasts Commanding Poise which could conceivably assist in leading troops or rousing crowds to action. This suit could see quite a bit of mileage in a Kingmaker-style campaign I suspect.

Triton Scale arrives just in time for high seas adventures, a fishy suit of scale mail and has everything you need to go diving without a bathysphere. Cold resistance, some sparing freedom of movement--both useful tools for any character--but for the aquatic bend we go further with slipstream and aquatic adaption, making its use in water considerably easier. From there, be a child of the sea and gain a swim speed--or later even a watery form until one day one can even bring about a tsunami. Maybe it's just me, but there ought to have been a little nod to make this kit immune to rust effects!

Vrithmytrix's Bane is the final offering and it is an imposing suit of black banded mail fashioned from a black dragoness! With dragon's claws and breath alike and even wings later, coupled with acid resistance and then immunity--one can start to grow into black dragon fashion themselves. Add to this Dragon's Mind which provides improved saves against charm, sleep and fear effects and the ability to cast darkness and it really rounds things up tidily. It's certainly a very cool looking suit of armor!

Overall: 33 pages, of which cover, credits and OGL occupy 4--leaving 29 pages to fill with our offered armor. Legendary VI: Legendary Armor continues to follow Purple Duck Games' clean two-column formatting and keeps things fairly clean to read and the mechanical crunch accessible. Where this product absolutely blows the doors out is art--every piece of armor presented in the material here has a consistent, sharp and really evocative individual piece of art to really bring them front and center in the imagination. Tamas Baranya did a fantastic job with the suits of armor and making them stand out!

I've been very fond of the entire Legendary series on the whole simply by being a fan of the premise. At the most basic level it's really just gear that gets better--and it's the sort of thing that a given group might love or hate; but if yours is one which enjoys storied treasure to grow alongside your characters or if you liked the Legacy Items experience, it's hard to go wrong with Purple Duck Games Legendary offerings in general.

Personally, I had been hoping for this particular product to hit the line-up since for me, it seems there's never a shortage of cool magic weapons but armor is so often left lacking. There is a curious conundrum with armor mechanically in that generally speaking, folks almost always end up using certain staples in each 'class' of light, medium or heavy armor--so having something like this provide really compelling offerings of those which don't so often see the field among adventuring parties is nice.

There's a lot of value here between very solid artwork and cool stories and powers; if you're in the market for interesting treasure, you've found armor lacking in the past or even had peaked interest in employing just a few of these entries into a story or campaign, I'd definitely recommend this one. Marc Radle has done a stellar job and I look forward to seeing what comes up next from Purple Duck in future Legendary entries (hopefully more treatments for wondrous items!) A solid five stars here.

Excellent supplement of iconic armors

The sixth installment of Purple Duck Games' excellent series for PFRPG focuses on magic armor and clocks in at 33 pages - 1 page front cover, 1 page editorial, 2 1/2 pages of SRD, leaving 28 1/2 pages of content for the new magic armors, so let's check them out!

In case you're new to the series, the pdf explains how these items work - essentially, in order to use these items, you have to fulfill certain criteria. If you do, however, you'll see them improving in strength and powers over the levels just as you do. That being said, after the last "Legendary..."-installment has provided my personal favorite equipment-book of 2011, this treatise on armors has a doubly hard standing - after all, unfortunately armors tend to be less "sexy" for players than weapons, even though they are just as essential. A crucial difference of this installment and previous "Legendary..."-titles is that the items no longer cap at a +5 bonus, becoming epic artifact-like treasures befitting of high-level heroes. While your first reaction might be a scoff, let me assure you that balance is still kept and that I welcome this decision, as it both eliminates unnecessary design-restrictions and also underlines the legendary nature of the items herein.

Contained herein are 15 sets of original, legendary pieces of armor, each of which comes with its own b/w-artwork by Tamas Baranya and I have to comment on this - the artworks rock! Take e.g. an aquatic plate with a toothy fish-mouth-style helm. Neat! What's also neat is that each of the armors comes with an extensive background story that runs the gamut from classical themes of unrequited loves to snobbish princes turned just rulers and dragon hunters becoming prey of their draconic nemesis.
Even better, each and every one of the armor's stories has a built-in hook that just might hint at the supposed location of it and how it got separated from its erstwhile user and remain generic and easily inserted without becoming boring reads. Formatting-wise, the individual sets feature lists that depict their growth in power up to the 20th level, fully detailed information on their individual abilities and write-ups of their special qualities, as several new ones are introduced herein.
To give you an example, let's take the first piece of armor, the Assassin's Chain: Once the armor of a ruthless killer, said man got a taste of his own medicine when a brotherhood of assassins targeted and killed his family. Vowing vengeance, not even death could stop the killer and, once all his foes had been taken care of, he finally died, leaving behind an armor that may hide you from even blindsense, tremorsense and similar abilities at the highest levels, making you an apex predator among men - but is fate willing to grant you the armor? The thirst for vengeance that guided its first possessor, is it inherent in the armor or just a coincidence?

Beyond the rules , the fluff serves as excellent supplemental material to further invoke a sense of mystery, purpose and determination underlying the individual armors that serves as a guiding principle of making what is contained in these pages a remarkable assortment of items, not only from a crunch-perspective.

Conclusion:
Editing and formatting in the revised version are top-notch, I didn't notice any glitches. Layout adheres to PDG's 2-column b/w/purple-standard and is printer-friendly. I already commented on the neat artwork, especially for this low price. The pdf comes fully bookmarked and, as all PDG-releases, takes up surprisingly little space, making it viable for mobile devices - something I felt I should finally comment on. I have truly nothing significant to complain about - classic armors of dragonhide go along-side exotic ones of bulette hide and even silks and the individual stories and crunch complement each other to a degree seldom seen, providing hooks and iconic tales that can easily be woven into just about any campaign. Seeing my lack of complaints, the excellent quality and the low price, I'm going to settle for a final verdict of 5 stars and with the revised version, I'm happy to add the seal of approval as well. Congratulations to author Marc Radle!

Endzeitgeist out.

A fantastic collection of some truly legendary suits of armor

Weighing in at 33 pages (with front cover, ToC, and just over 2 pages for OGL) this PDF delivers roughly 28 pages of new material for the Legendary series from Purple Duck Games. The sixth book in the series, the focus is on those suits of armor that never fail to inspire the grandest of tales, and the most epic of songs, I speak of course, of Legendary Armor. The suit, found bathed in a beam of sunlight, sequestered away from the world, awaiting that perfect someone, in short that suit we as players all secretly hoped our GM's would someday place within our path.

First thing I noticed looking through this PDF was the inclusion of art for every suit of armor. Not only is every suit fully described and detailed with its own fluff and crunch, but you will be left with no doubt as to what the author of this work (Marc Raddle) had in mind when he designed these items. And what of that illustrations? Tamas Baranya was the artist, and did an excellent job in translating and interpreting these suits into visuals that are excellent. All art is done in a B&W color scheme, with a comparable stance for each suit reminiscent of a department store mannequin, with at least one suit sporting a “blank face” as if to show the armor on a tailor's dummy.

Starting with an introduction, the author explains that while legendary treasures have traditionally always come with a hefty price in the form of quests, loss of abilities, etc. around his game table they have devised an alternative. Offered within the introduction is an alternate means of allowing the armor to advance as a character builds in levels, utilizing what I can only think to describe as “prerequisites”. Personally, I really like the idea, and think it helps to keep a balance on items of this nature, while allowing them to grow organically within the structure of a characters lifespan and career.

We are presented with fifteen new armors here, all of them unique in their own way. Assassin's Chain granting several abilities to enhance the effectiveness of a silent and stealthy killer. Next up is Battlecaster Armor which is presented as a custom suit of chain leggings and sleeves crafted by the first magus. Of it's abilities, perhaps the one that grabbed me the most and made me want to drop this into my campaign world is an ability that would allow a caster , while wearing the armor, to expend a spell to harness the raw magical energy into a melee weapon. Upon a successful hit with said weapon, that energy translates into additional damage dice based upon the level of the spell originally expended.

Beggar's Feast won out as my favorite suit out of this collection, and I think it had more to do with the story behind it and the way it is depicted via illustration than its actual abilities. The suit was crafted by a prince after he finds himself denied access back into his father's palace. Alone and forced to live amongst the filth he had looked down upon he adapted, and became a folk hero, determined to feed his new “kingdom”. The suit itself is a ragtag mismatched suit of padded armor, but with it the prince fed his subjects thanks to the abilities the suit gave him the capacity to use.

Blood Drinker gives us our first suit of armor from the other side of the alignment pool. A spiked suit of dread plate with a penchant for bleed abilities, this one just screams for an anti-paladin NPC on so many levels. Champion's Plate gives a serious nod of love to the horseback knights out there, and even ups the ante by giving access to a draconic mount (for amounts of time limited to the wearer's level). Healer's Hand reminds us that armor can be worn by those seeking to heal, as well as harm. Kama-Xia is the first truly unique suit of armor in that the design is unique enough it earns the first full chart for armor bonus/dex bonus/armor check etc. Basically a mail on leather coat, the design concept is strikingly beautiful.

Kelgror's Ghost I can honestly say was the first suit I read in here that I immediately knew which player I wanted to grant this to within my current playgroup, and literally had to stop reading to jot down some ideas on how to introduce it into my game. It is also the first suit that, as far as layout decisions went, brings up my first complaint. The chart depicting the growth of the suit as it and the wearer increase in levels is split across two pages. Now, technically there is nothing wrong with that, and I know it is a matter of personal taste, but I have never been a fan of splitting charts and tables, as there is always a layout decision that will allow it to stay together for the flow of reading.

Landshark's Hide takes the concept of hide armor down the path of the bulette, after all, who says all hide armor is made the same? Mage Hunter's Armor is the perfect suit for those looking to do some serious damage to spell chucker of the arcane variety. Granting it's wearer several useful spell like abilities all aimed at identifying and stopping arcane casters, as well as granting Spell Resistance, this suit would work very well within a campaign world for those tasked with keeping wizards in line. Minstrel's Boon, a leather suit, expands the performance capacity and knowledge skill check success rate of it's wearer, as well aiding in protecting a bard from those pesky silence spells, as well as blindness and or deafness.

Oak Heart's Armor marks the second suit unique enough to need gear stats as it is a suit of wooden plates over leather armor. The wood being taken from the burnt body of a treant, the armor grants several abilities to its wearer that would please any druid. The pinnacle ability of this armor is its ability to summon forth the spirit of the treant from whom the armor is made. I fell in love with this suit, I can not lie. This suit, it's history, is exactly how a GM rewards a player for doing a druid justice. Seducer's Silk is the third unique build for a suit of armor, this being a ceremonial suit of silk armor, complete with full armor statistics and a host of abilities to make those around the wearer more than happy to be complaint with pleasing the wearer. Triton Scale allows a land dweller to function as a force to be reckoned in an aquatic setting, granting movement and the capacity for breath, as well as a few impressive tactical abilities.

Vrithmytrix's Bane gives us the obligatory dragonhide suit, this one being of a black dragon. Granting claws, wings and a breath weapon attack, the suit carries some serious firepower with it. It did however end up on my wrong side, as it, like Kelgror's Ghost has it's advancement chart split across two pages. I know, I know, I'm picky, lol.

The book closes out with contact information and an open offer for interested writers to submit material to Purple Duck Games

So, final thoughts.....Other than the two charts spread across two pages, I found four other editing missteps. All of them minor, a missing “the” here, and extra “a” there, and two instances of a letter being left off of a word. Like I said, minor, but editing mishaps none the less. The material was well written, and designed with the concept of making truly memorable items to add to a campaign world. The art was way above par, and a welcome addition. Balancing the editing and layout issues with the material presented, I am going to go with a 4 star rating, and highly recommend this product to any GM looking to add the presence of legendary armor to their world.

RPGNow Review

Like earlier installments in the 'Legendary' series, the basic premise is that some of the best magic items - the sort that feature in bardic songs up and down the land - grow with the hero that uses them. This time, it is a selection of armours: each complete with backstory and a wealth of detail that means the item might well be the focus of a whole adventure itself, never mind the legends that will grow up around you once you have got your paws on it and begin to use it in your own adventures.